Here's Apple's Holiday Gift to Its Employees

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Kif Leswing

That’s one way to boost the number of Apple Music subscribers.

Apple’s employees are receiving an unusually generous holiday gift from Cupertino this year.

Apple executive Eddy Cue told employees in a video message Monday that they would be receiving a free nine-month subscription to Apple Music later this month, according to MacRumors.

Last week, Apple employees received a free pair of urBeats headphones, which sell for $100. Combined with the $90 streaming music subscription, the retail value of Apple’s holiday gift this year is $190—worth significantly more than the $60 customized Incase backpack Apple employees received last year.

Apple’s annual holiday gift goes out to all of its employees, including retail workers, employees based at in Cupertino, and staffers at international satellite offices. There are 66,000 Apple employees in the United States, including 30,000 retail employees. Apple employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide.

The free subscription to Apple Music should help Apple’s retail Geniuses familiarize themselves with the service and promote Apple Music more effectively in-store. CEO Tim Cook said in October that Apple Music had 6.5 million paying customers, and another 8.5 million in a free three-month trial period, still a fraction of rival streaming service Spotify’s subscribers.

Free Beats headphones aren’t the only bonus staffers received from Apple this year. Cook announced in October that all Apple employees, including retail workers, are newly eligible for restricted stock units, a type of stock grant option that was previously offered only to corporate leadership and product engineers.

Apple  AAPL -0.47%  isn’t the only tech giant to give its employees an annual holiday present. Last year, Google  GOOG 0.74%  gave each of its workers a smartwatch. This year, Mountain View topped that present by giving its workers a free Nexus 5X Android smartphone—retail value $329—and if Google employees didn’t want a new phone, the company offered to make a donation to charityinstead.